Pyrmont

Sydney is a city which has undergone several different urban processes of change. One of the more recent dynamics, urban consolidation, is both the cause and effect of Sydney’s changing character and demographics. Urban consolidation is defined as ‘policies and programs designed to increase population densities in urban areas’. Although it has both positives and negatives which will be analysed in this essay, ultimately the NSW government had decided in the early 1990’s that due to the positives outweighing the negatives, urban consolidation would be implemented upon suburbs surrounding Sydney’s CBD, and Pyrmont, an inner city suburb located to the west of the CBD would be the showpiece. The effect of urban consolidation has caused dramatic change in the nature of the suburb – it has witnessed a major transformation from a working class suburb to a suburb for a high income society consisting mainly of young professionals. This essay will analyse the different impacts, causes and relationships of urban consolidation in Pyrmont to great depth to provide a clear picture of the different changes this suburb has experienced. The growth and characteristics of Pyrmont can be attributed to 5 major factors. History, demographics, government, economics and technology History Pyrmont was originally known as a working class suburb. It was characterised by blue collar workers, small homes such as terraces, no backyards and the dominance of the primary and secondary industries such as the coal power station, CSR sugar refinery, rail shunting yards and shipping. Post world war 2 however, the suburb entered a state of urban decay due to the urban process of suburbanisation, both residential and mainly industrial. The availability of the car to average households, ‘great aussie dream’ of a house with a big backyard and movement of commerce are the main reasons that residential suburbanisation occurred. Alongside this, industrial suburbanisation occurred due to lack of space in the city, excess of land in the west and specialisation of land for industry. As a result, the industry in Pyrmont declined, and the residents were forced to follow work. The suburb was left in a state of neglect and ruin. This kept getting worse until the early 1990s when the NSW government decided to reverse this process. This will be further analysed in the factor of Government. Government The City West Development Corporation (now the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority) was created in 1992 to implement the governments ‘building better cities’ program. The aim of this program was to revive inner city suburbs such as Pyrmont which were undergoing urban blight. Although this program looked at encouraging urban renewal from the private sector, one of its main aims was to encourage urban consolidation for a number of generic reasons – environmental, economic, social and reasons specific to Sydney. Generic reasons include: * Infrastructure costs. – It costs 30% less to house people through urban consolidation than suburbanisation. * Transport costs. – Traffic congestion will reduce as public transport will be much more widely used. * Environmental issues. – Not only traffic congestion as mentioned above, but also suburbanisation will decrease, so there will be less clearing of land. A reason unique to the context is the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. The government did not want international visitors to old rundown suburbs.